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I want to offer an impression and see if anyone else is picking up on the same thing (or if I'm just over-thinking irrelevant bits).

My sense has been that Lynch is using the 25 year gap to establish that, since the nuclear test and the arrival of the other-worldly entities, the world has been in a state of marked decay, essentially rotting from the inside out over the decades since that explosion.

For example, we know at the time of the nuclear test, the convenience store appeared...in a later episode, we see evil Cooper walking through lodge corridors that are paired with drone-shots that track above a forest. The sense I get from that, from the way the images are pieced together, is that the lodge world has been increasingly putting out tendrils into the real world, in a cancery sort of way.

Also, a lot of the disturbing, one-scene vignettes, where we see random TP citizens in various states of distress (the sick kid in the car, the bar patron crawling/screaming etc)...along with the degree to which so many characters are overtly cruel, violent, even more than usual for the world of TP (richard horne, guy who tried to force himself on Sarah Palmer etc...there have always been vile people in TP, but now even random, nondescript background people reveal themselves to be malevolent)...to me, the general vibe is that the world is now in a more decayed, broken down place...people are in more emotionally precarious states than they were in the TP world we first saw 25 years ago.

So, the creeping tendrils of the lodge and the vignettes with characters in extremely troubled states...I've read this as Lynch's way of establishing that the nuclear tests and the window they opened into these other realms set off an erosion of sorts, one that is, again, indicating a state of decay for the reality TP exists in. Which could be Lynch's way of viewing the last century and the impact of technology on our shared humanity, idk.

Or, it's all just disconnected scenes and I'm reading too much into them. Curious if others have sensed that the 25 year gap is revealing a world going increasingly wrong.

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Has anyone else tried "talking Dougie" in real life? Try it when you are with a large group, or at a loud party. I'm an introvert, and so it was a helpful device...

... and holy fuck it works frighteningly well. Just be careful trying it on a spouse.

Anyway, a moment of silence for Dougie.

When he arrived, he seemed like an unworkable gimmick. Reality had to warp so hard to accomodate him. But it grew into a rich story, and watching the drama dance around it was the fun.

How the story is told matters so much. And, of course, that's easy to remember when when things are backwards-talking or monochrome or special effects. But a doofy mute in a suit? How can this make for good TV?

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Has anyone else tried "talking Dougie" in real life? Try it when you are with a large group, or at a loud party. I'm an introvert, and so it was a helpful device...

... and holy fuck it works frighteningly well. Just be careful trying it on a spouse.

Anyway, a moment of silence for Dougie.

When he arrived, he seemed like an unworkable gimmick. Reality had to warp so hard to accomodate him. But it grew into a rich story, and watching the drama dance around it was the fun.

How the story is told matters so much. And, of course, that's easy to remember when when things are backwards-talking or monochrome or special effects. But a doofy mute in a suit? How can this make for good TV?

Oh, it did.

I was doing this the other day in work and was suprised at how effective it is in daily conversations.... i did feel like i was missing dougie by the end.

On a side note i did notice the road house was shown differently this episode to how i recall it in others... i can't confirm just going on memory

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So, just spitballing here but is it possible that Janey-E is really Dianne? I wish I could connect those dots in a clear way but I can't. That said, we're taking the word of Tulpa-Dianne that she's her sister when she may be using the term metaphorically.

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Holy shit, this episode was brilliant and much "tighter" than anything we have seen in this season so far.

Cooper re-emergence was so fucking good. It instantly reminded me why fell in love with the series when I first started watching it. I love how the main theme just suddenly started playing at a weird moment. Also, US health care system seems really efficient in releasing patients who have just woken up from a coma.

Love the Mitchum brothers.

Audey's scene was really distressing and, for the most part, well executed too. I could have done without the camera cuts during Audrey's dance.

I'm not sure what to think of Diane's revelation vs her being a balloon human. The first part of the scene was really intense, though.

Can't wait for the epic showdown between all the key characters and James in the Sheriff's department next week.

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Before Cooper woke up, didn't Bushnell hear a humming sound somewhere in the room, like Ben Horne did some episodes ago?

Yes, it was the same sound!

Unrelated: I’ve been a fan of Laura Dern (in Lynch projects anyway) ever since Wild at Heart, but her performance in Twin Peaks has been astounding. After such a drawn-out, intense, scene, Diane’s reaction to being told she was a tulpa was one of the best moments of the series. I can’t get over how good she and Grace Zabriskie are.

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@Invisible Strings I think your use of "tendrils", as a sort of spreading of the decay, is really interesting! It immediately made me think of the power lines that spread all over the land, carrying electricity with them. I definitely think there's something to that analysis.

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"talking dougie" being an effective communication style could be a result of the mirroring psychological phenomena. This is where a person mirrors the speech or body language of another person to create an affirming situation. By mirroring a person's speech, you are demonstrating that you listened to what the person said and affirming what that person said as something good or true. By mirroring a person's body language, you are also creating an affirming atmosphere.

It takes great will power to not mirror a persons phrases or body language, and it is one of the most off putting things to experience. Once when I applied for antidepressants, the psychiatrist gave me a "still face" reaction to my monologue, and it was like talking in one of those sound proof audio booths where you can only hear teh sound of your own voice, not even the reverberations of your voice echoing in the room. Here's a video of the distress such a still face will give a 1 year old child.

So in this regard, Cooper/Dougie very much is the mind of a child quickly relearning how to experience the human world.

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I found it a little weird at first to hear Kyle Maclachlan's voice as Good Coop. His voice has obviously changed in the past 25 years, but I've been thinking about those changes as being part of his Bad Coop performance. So even though his acting was good and his performances was very different, he still at first sounded more like Bad Coop than the 1990 Good Coop to me. But then I got used to it and it was fine.

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- I really enjoy the fact that Lynch seems to recognize the dulling effect the Roadhouse concerts have had on viewers. I was totally hoisted once everything went all topsy turvey on us. Poor, poor Audrey.

Yeah, I usually get up and start putting the dishes from dinner away once the musical segments start. Lynch got one over on me this time.

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So in this regard, Cooper/Dougie very much is the mind of a child quickly relearning how to experience the human world.

I was hanging out with a toddler the other day and his main thing was to shuffle around and randomly repeat things people said to him. He had one or two things he was interested above other stuff and he would follow them around and repeat their name. "Ball, ball, ball..." it was all very Dougie Jones, I gotta say.

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I always assumed that it was Hawks job to find something missing, which would lead to the return of Agent Cooper.

So he found the lost pages of Lauras Diary, which caused Truman to call Gordon Cole. This made Cole search for Douglas Jones in Las Vegas. This resulted in two idiot agents not being able to find Douglas Jones. Instead they witnessed a man murdering the remaining henchmen of Bad Coop.

In the moment of the arrest Cooper wakes up.

So was arresting the Zawaski Accounting guy (aka a man under a lot of stress) the key to Coopers return?

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I always assumed that it was Hawks job to find something missing, which would lead to the return of Agent Cooper.

So he found the lost pages of Lauras Diary, which caused Truman to call Gordon Cole. This made Cole search for Douglas Jones in Las Vegas. This resulted in two idiot agents not being able to find Douglas Jones. Instead they witnessed a man murdering the remaining henchmen of Bad Coop.

In the moment of the arrest Cooper wakes up.

So was arresting the Zawaski Accounting guy (aka a man under a lot of stress) the key to Coopers return?

Maybe a combination of necessary ZAP! and being alone.

I have to think that after the ZAP!, Cooper wasn't going to be alone for a while - Janie-E, then the paramedics, the doc, etc. But then when the insurance boss was the last guy around the strange noise distracting him finally got Cooper alone and that gave him the ability to talk to Mike without anyone else asking why he's talking to no one and giving them his hair.